Live coverage of Samsung’s Galaxy S3 announcement event

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The highly-awaited Samsung Mobile Unpacked event is today, which means we are probably just minutes away from the announcement of the Galaxy S3. The phone stands to be the most popular handset from Samsung’s incredibly successful Galaxy line. There are a huge amount of GS3 rumors floating around the internet that are about to be laid to waste and a nearly unprecedented amount of interest, so this is a big day for anyone that follows mobile, Android, or Samsung. We’ll be following the event live and Geek.com’s sister site, ExtremeTech, has a reporter attending the event who will be providing us with images and feedback.

The event has yet to start but it seems like the NDA has been lifted. It looks like the Galaxy S3 will have a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display running at 720p, 16 or 32GB of storage, 802.11n WiFi, an 8MP camera, microSD, and a 2100 mAh battery. It’ll have NFC and some other perks, like burst-mode image capture. So basically no surprises so far. Hopefully the event will reveal more, particularly about chips powering the device.

Check back for updates! Everything starts at 2PM EST. And it’s started…

JK Shin is talking now, after a stirring introduction from the MC. He says the GS3 is “the best-in-class smartphone in the world.” Why? The 4.8-inch SuperAMOLED display, which sets the bars for display quality, the 8MP camera with intelligent features like Best Photo, a 2100mAh battery which will last longer than the average smartphone, and a 8.6mm thickness, and a 133g weight.

The GS3 design mimics the warmth and beauty of nature. The feedback sounds are compose from the sound of raindrops.

There are intelligent features too. The GS3 will track your eyes and keep the screen running why you look at it, this feature is known as Smart Stay. There is also S Voice which will offer customizable voice recognition and voice commands.

The release date for the Galaxy S3’s 3G version will be available in May in Europe.

The release date for the Galaxy S3’s 4G version – which will land in Japan, North America, and Korea – is this summer.

The phone will understand our intentions – Smart Stay will keep the screen awake without touching it by using the front-facing camera. It also listens and responds with S Voice. This is a like a “good friend who listens intently” and follows voice commands. It can organize your schedule and check the weather. To get the GS3 to wake up you can give it up to 5 different wake up phrases, such as “Hi buddy”. Then you can use a voice command to get the weather or you can say “I want to take a picture” and the phone will launch the camera app. The phone knows British/American English, German, French, continental and South American Spanish, Japanese, and Korean.

The Galaxy S3 will connect friends and family members with their social media pages. And it will have clever features — for instance if you are texting with a person and then you put the phone to your ear, it will dial them. (A lot of the features sound presumptuous but most seem logical. It’s something we’ll have to test to understand.)

Another feature is S Beam, which will use NFC and WiFi Direct to beam files. You can beam a video by putting your phone next to a friend’s phone and then selecting the video, with just one touch. You can also mirror your screen onto a larger display using WiFi Direct.

There is also Buddy Photo Share, which lets you share images with friends. The Galaxy S3 enables quick photosharing by recognizing friend’s faces and offering to send a picture to them as soon as you snap the shot. It’ll do this via MMS or email. It will work with multiple people if it recognizes more than one person in a photograph.

Time for the tech! A video just said “four heads are better than one” and noted that the GS3 has a quad-core SoC. This will likely the GSM version which will be available in Europe relatively soon. There will be a separate US launch, which is where we’ll meet the 4G LTE version.

The camera has “zero shutter lag” so what you see on the screen when you press the button is what you get. Then it takes less then 1 second to get back to camera mode. You can take up to 20 shots in burst mode. The GS3 does 3.3 shots per second. From bursts of 8 the phone will be able to take out the best picture if you use the Best Picture mode. There are other smart photo features, like group tagging, an HD front-facing camera, still shot capture while taking video, and a backlit illuminated sensor.

The 4.8-inch display is Super AMOLED with a 0.01ms response speed. It’s energy efficient for maximum battery life too. And yes, Samsung knows it’s big, but the screen is 22% larger than the GS2, but the phone is “barely” bigger. This is due to a smaller bezel.

And there is a wireless charger using resonance charging!

There is also an in-call channel boosting, Bluetooth 4.0, and GLONASS in addition to GPS.

Accessories include a flip cover, a car dock, a wireless charging kit, an HDTV adapter, the S Pebble MP3 player, and more.

There are lots of software services as well. Drive Link will connect the Galaxy S3 to your car’s head unit and there will be a connected health app as well.

The GS3 will have enterprise level security. There is better support for Exchange Active sync, encryption, and remote management.

Samsung is working to promote NFC, especially for payment. Samsung will be promoting NFC at the Olympics this summer.

Oh yeah, and it runs Ice Cream Sandwich. There will be a MicroSD slot for expansion. The phone will be available in 16GB, 32GB, and finally 64GB.

The official release date is May 29th in Europe. It will go global on that date with a world tour. (Again, this will be for the GSM version. Samsung has not announced the processor for that, but it’s likely the quad-core version previously mentioned.)

And that’s it, the event is over! We’ll keep uploading pictures to this post for the next few minutes. Check back to Geek.com for further coverage for visit ExtremeTech.com for the hands-on!